Britannica marks a pair of notorious historical anniversaries: Jack the Ripper claimed his first victim 124 years ago this week and 38 years ago today, Richard Milhous Nixon became the first American president to resign.

Although the two events were separated by almost a century, they continue to loom large in the popular consciousness and each has inspired enormous amounts of speculation. Why did the Ripper target prostitutes? What was said by Nixon and Bob Halderman during that infamous 18-and-a-half-minute gap? Why did the London police have such a difficult time tracking down the Ripper? Was the group dedicated to Nixon’s reelection trying to come up with the most supervillain-sounding acronym possible when they settled on CREEP? And perhaps the most prominent question that links Whitechapel and Watergate—whodunnit?

The biggest “who” of the Watergate scandal involved the identity of Deep Throat, the government source that provided Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein with information that implicated the Nixon White House in the Watergate break-in. For decades, journalists and pundits speculated about the mysterious tipster, and the guessing game provided material for countless articles and a number of books. Over the years, the list of likely suspects was narrowed to a roster that included Nixon speechwriter Pat Buchanan; Nixon’s chief of staff, Alexander Haig; Henry Kissinger; and deputy White House counsel Fred Fielding. Vanity Fair magazine finally ended the mystery in 2005, when it published an interview with former associate director of the FBI W. Mark Felt. Felt admitted that he was Deep Throat, and both Woodward and his paper, the Washington Post, confirmed his assertion. The most famous anonymous person in American journalism had been revealed.

A contemporary engraving about the Jack the Ripper killings. Credit: Getty Images

No such closure can be found in the Ripper case. The identity of history’s most famous serial killer remains shrouded, although some fascinating guesses have been presented over the years. According to Britannica’s article on the murderer:

The most commonly cited suspects are Montague Druitt, a barrister and teacher with an interest in surgery who was said to be insane and who disappeared after the final murders and was later found dead; Michael Ostrog, a Russian criminal and physician who had been placed in an asylum because of his homicidal tendencies; and Aaron Kosminski, a Polish Jew and a resident of Whitechapel who was known to have a great animus toward women (particularly prostitutes) and who was hospitalized in an asylum several months after the last murder. Several notable Londoners of the era, such as the painter Walter Sickert and the physician Sir William Gull, also have been subjects of such speculation.

The “Gull as Ripper” theory is presented in From Hell, a masterfully executed graphic novel by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell. Moore and Campbell theorize that the Ripper murders were an elaborately staged plot by the British royal family to cover up an indiscretion by Prince Albert Victor, the firstborn son of Prince Albert Edward (the man who would succeed Queen Victoria as King Edward VII). Gull, as Victoria’s physician, was a close confidant of the royal household. However, he was also 71 years old at the time of the Ripper killings. And although much is made of supposed Masonic symbolism in the Ripper murders, there is little evidence that Gull was a Freemason. Still, From Hell is an engaging read, and a quick viewing of the film adaptation will reveal why Moore refuses to be connected with Hollywood treatments of his works.